


Stitch me up

by Trojie



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, Injury, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-07
Updated: 2012-07-07
Packaged: 2017-11-09 09:38:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/454021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur and Eames are dangerous men in a dangerous line of work. Who cuddle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stitch me up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [treacle_tartlet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/treacle_tartlet/gifts).



> Written because everyone needs more cuddles, particularly the recipient.

'We might need the forceps this time,' grits out Arthur, leaning on the doorframe. Eames sighs, and puts down 'The World According to Clarkson'. 

'First aid kit's in the bathroom,' he says. 'Come on.'

Sadly, this isn't the first time Arthur's staggered through the door of one of Eames's safehouses, bleeding profusely, offering precious little in the way of explanation, and managing to stay awake long enough to critique Eames's bullet-extraction technique but not his sutures.

Eames puts him to bed, after he's stopped oozing, in the one bed in the place. Half an hour later, when he's disposed of all DNA evidence and made a couple of in-character phone calls, he follows him. 

Because this isn't the first time it's happened, Eames doesn't savage Arthur when he wakes up to find the point-man spooning him in the grey light of a Wellington dawn. 

'Next time I get to be the big spoon,' Eames says groggily, poking Arthur in the hip. 

Arthur mutters something incoherent and rolls over. Eames follows him and assumes big-spoon duties. They don't get up until the brother of the man Arthur dumped in the harbour last night breaks the door down.

Somehow Arthur manages to even make fleeing the country with a gunshot wound look dignified.

***

They're sharing a hotel room in Prague for reasons of budget and convenience the first time Arthur says, fake-diffidently, that they should sleep together. Well, actually what he says is that he wants Eames to fuck him.

Eames is happy to oblige. More than happy. Arthur's hair comes down around his face when he's fresh out of the shower, softens the sharp lines of him, and Eames thumbs at Arthur's pink lower lip and thinks of all the things he wants to do to him. 

Arthur ends up in Eames's lap, they make a terrible mess of an overstuffed hotel armchair, and in the morning they're curled together in one of the tiny twin beds in their hotel room. 

Cobb wakes them. He has to wait ten minutes, staring at the ceiling, while they dress, wipe everything that might have fingerprints on it, and grab their bags. 

He never speaks of it again, but the embarrassment of having caught Arthur blatantly mid-cuddle has clearly traumatised him.

***

After they incept Robert Fischer, everyone on that team lies low for a while. Eames heads to glorious Munich, picked pretty much because it's the last place anyone who'd just become fabulously wealthy and needed to hide would go, and rents an apartment, and waits until it's safe again. 

He falls asleep, very much alone, on his couch one night while watching reruns of Monty Python, and wakes up with Arthur sprawled over his chest in nothing but a pair of boxer shorts. 

'You're here,' Eames says, rather stupidly, although in his defence it is five am. 

Arthur blinks at him. 'Well, you weren't in Milton Keynes,' he points out. 

'... fair enough.'

Arthur puts his head back down on Eames's shoulder and resumes snoring. 

'Are we having a relationship?' Eames asks after a while, having failed to fall back asleep himself. 'Is this what this is? Or are there other men you cuddle after laughing in the face of death?'

'You are not my snuggling booty-call,' says Arthur, without raising his head. This makes his voice somewhat muffled. 'I'm a monogamous man-cuddler. I hope that's okay with you.'

'You are the only man I have ever spooned,' Eames says with absolute honesty.

'Good. I don't want to have to kill anyone in a jealous rage,' mumbles Arthur into Eames's chest-hair. 

'It'd have to be a pillow fight,' Eames points out. 'Cuddle disputes clearly have to be settled with pillow fights.'

'I have actually killed a man with a pillow,' says Arthur. 'Actually two, if you count that time with the pillowcase in Iowa.'

'You're terrifying,' says Eames admiringly. 

'You're warm.'

***

Eames should have seen it coming. 

He didn't. 

He is, therefore, by his own rules somewhat deserving of being duct-taped into a chair in an unsavoury-looking warehouse in Santiago. He actually recalls saying it, flippantly, to a chemist named Sonja some seven years ago: 'Anyone silly enough to _let_ themselves be kidnapped deserves it.'

He says some damn stupid fucking things, sometimes. 

The unsavoury gentlemen in the well-tailored suits have been quite clear about the fact that his presence here is a warning and a punishment to Arthur. This is what comes of entering into a consenting cuddling relationship with the most accomplished and therefore most hated point-man in the business.

There's a man of not overly-high intelligence grinning at Eames and flourishing a machete. If Eames were tied up with a rope he would have this bastard on the floor choking on his own broken teeth by now, but they've cocooned him and his chair in duct tape almost literally. He's stuck. 

'Hello,' says Arthur from the shadows, because he's not one of those dramatic ironic one-liner kind of heroes, and before you can say 'semi-automatic nine millimeter' the henchman is bubbling quietly on the floor, the machete has been used to separate Eames from the chair (although he still looks like the Silver Surfer) and Arthur's arms are tight around Eames's shoulders. 

Eames has never felt so relieved in his life as he does when he wraps his arms around Arthur's waist. He feels like he's hanging on for dear life. Arthur's heart is racing. 

'Don't you dare let go,' Arthur says, when Eames starts thinking that perhaps they should leave before the other kidnappers or the authorities arrive. 'I fucking love you. Don't you ever let go.'


End file.
